Bryson

At the 2020 census, 17,531 Americans bore the surname Bryson — 2,018th out of 156,621 surnames on file. That is about one person in 17,000.

By the numbers

People: 17,531
Rank: 2,018th
How common: 1 in 17,000
Per 100,000: 5.9

Where the name comes from

Origin a patronymic

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who bears the name

How people with the surname Bryson described their own race and Hispanic origin at the 2020 census:

White, not Hispanic 74.3%
Black, not Hispanic 16.2%
Two or more races, not Hispanic 4.9%
Hispanic or Latino 3.6%
American Indian or Alaska Native, not Hispanic 0.5%
Asian or Pacific Islander, not Hispanic 0.5%

Notable people called Bryson

Bill Bryson (born 1951)American-British author
Peabo Bryson (1951–2026)American singer
John Bryson (1943–2025)American businessman
Winifred Bryson (1892–1987)actress

People named Bryson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Surnames like Bryson

Also a first name

Bryson has been given to 83,525 American babies as a first name since 1914, peaking in 2017. See it as a given name.

Try it on yourself

Source: US Census Bureau, Frequently Occurring Surnames, 2020. The Census describes the file as the surnames borne by 100 or more people; rarer names are not published. The line is not quite exact, and 617 published names come in under it, the smallest at 92 people. Race and Hispanic origin are self-reported. Rates are worked out against the 298.9 million people the file's own figures are calculated on, which is fewer than the census counted in all: the difference is everyone whose surname was too rare to publish.